


Long Flight Home

by Hideous_Sun_Demon



Series: The Start Of The Rest Of Our Lives... [1]
Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotionally stunted hand holding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I would say ‘Seth/Lyor if you squint’ but, Lyor is terrible with emotions, Near-death Experiences, Nightmares, References to death/dead bodies, Touch-starved Lyor, ngl it’s barely subtext, post 2x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-12 22:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14737406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hideous_Sun_Demon/pseuds/Hideous_Sun_Demon
Summary: Seth hasn’t stirred for nearly two hours now, but still Lyor can’t take his eyes off of him.





	Long Flight Home

**Author's Note:**

> Lyor’s infuriating emotional immaturity left me wanting more after the finale, so that led to me writing this.

It’s a long flight home, and Lyor is counting the hours.

He wants to sleep. He’s tired, bone-tired, in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time. But his mind is on high alert, and he isn’t quite willing to surrender his trust to this plane by falling asleep in it. It’s stupid, this paranoia, Lyor knows it is. He’s well aware of the statistics- they’re far safer flying in this plane than they are on land, especially with Taurasi in the state of chaos that it’s been plunged into. But today had been a harsh lesson in not assuming safety. Lyor never could have predicted that he and Seth would have been caught up in a tsunami of all things, but that hadn’t stopped the wave from tearing across the island, taking trees and houses and people- so many people- with it.

At the moment, all Lyor wants is to be home. He craves the normal trouble that the White House brings. God, what he wouldn’t do to be tackling the Attorney General’s charges against the President right now.

With this impatience comes restlessness, and Lyor tries to content himself with drumming his fingers against the armrests of his chair, the beats a second out of sync with the irregular tapping of his foot. He wants to discuss the President’s re-election announcement, really sink his teeth into it so they can hit the ground running as soon as they get back, but the only person he can talk about it with is Seth, and the man is still fast asleep in the seat next to him.

Seth had only lasted ten minutes after take-off before passing out, chin slumping to his chest right in the middle of Lyor’s sentence. Rather rude, Lyor had thought, but if he’s exhausted, he can only imagine how tired Seth must be, so he lets him sleep. He can rib him about it later, Lyor decides, adding it to the seemingly endless list of things he can tease Seth about. Well, Seth calls it teasing- Lyor prefers to think of it as constructive criticism. 

Lyor’s eyes flit up and down Seth’s sleeping figure, studying the crooked line of an unconscious frown marring his features. Even if Seth did wake up then, Lyor isn’t in much of a critical mood.

Lyor’s incessant tapping stutters to a halt for a half a second as the whole plane shudders, metal groaning in protest as it weathers another bout of turbulence. He only misses a single beat before he continues his fidgeting, more fervent now than before. The flight back has been a lot rougher than their flight over, and this is the fourth time they’ve gone through turbulence. Seth had been awake for the first of it, had made a joke about it.

“Just our luck, right?” he’d said. “We get through the tsunami, and it’s the flight home that kills us.” Lyor hadn’t laughed- Seth isn’t funny on the best of days, but Lyor hadn’t even been able to muster a smirk or an eye roll at his expense this time, and he’d done nothing but tighten his grip on the armrests. Seth hadn’t seemed to find it that funny either.

Now that he’s asleep, the turbulence doesn’t seem to be bothering Seth one bit, Lyor notices as he watches his friend sleep. Seth must have been running on adrenaline for most of the day, since he hadn’t stopped from the moment Lyor had found him. He’d been constantly switching between talking to the governor, talking to the President, even helping out in the makeshift hospital that had been set up in the hotel. Then, just when they’d gotten a chance to catch their breath, the President had announced his plans to run for re-election, and the buzzing energy had returned. Now though, Seth is sleeping like the dead.

Lyor’s gut clenches. Maybe he should rethink his wording. 

It’s inaccurate, anyway. Lyor has often heard people say that those who’ve died just look like they’re sleeping. Those people have clearly never seen a dead body before. At least, none like the ones Lyor had seen that day. Gaping mouths with puffy tongues, stiffened arms and legs stretched out crookedly like dolls that had been bent out of shape, eyes wide open; cold and flat and empty. Seth sleeping can’t match that even if he tried, not with the healthy flush of colour in his cheeks, and the languid drooping of his shoulders, nothing close to stiff. But even so, Lyor studies the steady rise and fall of his chest, the occasional inaudible mumble and twitch of his lips, with a razor-sharp eye, making sure that nothing changes.

Seth hasn’t stirred for nearly two hours now, but still Lyor can’t take his eyes off of him.

The plane rocks with another few seconds of turbulence, and this time it elicits a mumble of protest from Seth, the man’s frown deepening into a grimace. Lyor’s own lips twitch into a smile despite himself, and he lets his gaze linger on Seth’s face for a few more seconds before tearing his eyes away and experimentally letting them slip closed. As much as his mind rails against it, he really needs to get some sleep if he wants to be functional when they get back. Maybe if he imitates sleep long enough, the tiredness will win out over the whirring cogs of his mind and he’ll finally get some rest. 

There’s a sudden rustling beside him, though, and Lyor’s eyes snap open, his head twisting around sharply to look at Seth just as a small sound of distress escapes the man’s mouth. He’s still asleep, but there’s a tension in his form that wasn’t there before. Lyor watches with bated breath to see if Seth will move again. He’s quiet under Lyor’s watchful eye for a few minutes, and Lyor figures the restlessness has passed, but just as he begins to contemplate giving sleep another shot, he hears another cut-off whine. It’s barely audible, but Lyor’s senses feel as sensitive as an exposed wire, and he doesn’t miss a second as Seth’s face contorts into something that, even in the dark, Lyor can recognise as fear.

“Go,” Seth mumbles, words quiet and sleep-slurred, but still laced with electrifying anxiety. “Move....Get to the roof.....”

Sleep talking is one of Seth’s more irritating habits that Lyor has noticed. He’d mumbled out a few scattered sentences over the last couple hours of the flight, but nothing this coherent. Or this distressed. Seth shifts in his seat again, fingers flexing into tight fists as he sinks deeper into his nightmare. “Oh god,” he breathes. “God, no, no, no...”

Seth lifts up his left arm in some aborted gesture, as if he’s reaching out to grasp something just out of reach, before it limply flops back down to the armrest. Lyor stays rooted in place, gaze riveted on his friend’s trembling form. He’s intrigued to see where this goes- Seth did a lot of talking after they were reunited, but almost none of it was about what he’d seen, save the details necessary for the President- but his clinical curiosity is barely enough to overpower the unfamiliar squirming in his gut.

The arm goes up again, withdrawing against Seth’s chest, fist tightly clenched and trembling. His distress seems to be getting worse, along with Lyor’s growing discomfort. A wince flits across Seth’s face, and then all his features go deadly still.

“Lyor,” he whispers, almost a whimper. There’s a jumble of unintelligible muttering, and then again. “No- Lyor...”

Lyor swallows. Forget curiosity, he’s had enough of this. Before Seth can let loose another weak spasm of his arm, Lyor captures the man’s wrist in his grasp, caging it with long fingers. “Seth,” he urges softly, hoping to snap him out of the dream, but the touch alone seems to be enough to settle him for the moment. Lyor keeps a hold of Seth’s wrist even as he gently lowers it down, wary that if he lets go, the flailing will return. He watches Seth’s fingers slowly ease out of their tight clench.

Seth gradually relaxes, making no more sounds save the sharp hiss of a breath being sucked in, and Lyor finds himself absentmindedly studying the hand he’s captured- it’s more calloused than he’d have expected of a writer. He faintly wonders if Seth plays guitar. After a minute, though, Lyor realises that the rhythm of the man’s breathing sounds different- shallower, more irregular- and he glances up to see that Seth’s eyes are wide open. They lock gazes for a long few seconds. While he’s been watching Seth, Lyor realises, Seth has been watching him. 

Lyor knows he should say something comforting. He should say, ‘are you okay?’ Or, ‘you’re safe now.’ Instead, he says simply, “You were having a nightmare,” as if Seth didn’t already know. Seth shifts in his seat, shaking off the last of the tension tightening the set of his shoulders. 

“Uh, yeah,” he coughs, and there’s a touch of embarrassment in his voice. Lyor finds it odd for him to be ashamed of something as involuntary as a nightmare, but he doesn’t comment. Seth flickers his gaze around the cabin nervously. “I wasn’t too loud, was I?”

“No,” Lyor shakes his head. “You talked a bit, but it was all very quiet.”

Seth frowns again. “What was I saying?”

Lyor’s stomach flips as he remembers the desperation in Seth’s voice as he’d called out his name. He plasters a look of careful nonchalance on his face. 

“Nothing interesting.”

Seth nods silently, turning his head to gaze out through the window at the blanket of clouds they’re soaring above. He’s quiet- so quiet that Lyor thinks he’s about to fall back asleep- and suddenly he’s struck with a fierce desire to not be alone with his thoughts again. So, he speaks.

“You were dreaming about when it hit?” He doesn’t really need to ask, but he has to get Seth talking somehow.

Seth hums in confirmation, tilting his head to look straight at Lyor again. In the dark of the cabin, his eyes are bright. “When, uh, when the tsunami hit, there were maybe a dozen other people on the roof with me. But...” he swallows, letting loose an exhausted exhale. “There were still people downstairs, trying to get up. And people in the streets, on the beach...” He shakes his head. “So many people died, Lyor.”

“Not everyone,” Lyor feels the need to remind him. “I heard about you playing the hero- you carried those children up onto the roof. They’re alive thanks to you.” Lyor still doesn’t like the look on Seth’s face, dangerously close to being tearful, so he continues on. “Those people weren’t your responsibility, Seth. Nothing could have been done for them.”

Seth sighs. “I know,” he admits, “but it still sucks, y’know?” He quirks his lips a little in Lyor’s direction. “...Not really a story to tell my grandchildren about.”

Lyor ducks his head in a sort-of apology. “No,” he replies, “I guess not.”

Seth still looks haunted. Lyor can’t say he feels the same. He’d heard the numbers of estimated casualties as they’d left, and the reports were staggering. He’d seen the bodies as well, lined up in shrouded rows in the section of the makeshift triage centre that had been cornered off for the deceased. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to care, not really. He’d only been able to think about one person.

Lyor hasn’t let go of Seth’s wrist. Under his fingertips, he feels the reassuring thump of a pulse.

Seth looks down at Lyor’s fingers encircling him, faint surprise crossing his face, as if he’s only just registered Lyor’s touch. He doesn’t say anything, though, and he doesn’t pull away- Lyor finds himself inexplicably, stupidly grateful. 

“You know,“ Seth starts, eyes carefully shuttered as he studies Lyor’s grip. “When we were going around the island in the motorboat, we saw a lot of people in the water. We pulled up a few of them as we went, or directed them to safety, but, uh, a lot of them were already dead.” He grimaces, face clouding over. “We passed this one guy. He was just- just floating there, face down. White, brown hair, cream collared shirt, and, uh-“ Seth sucks in a shaky breath. “For a second, I really though-“

Lyor takes in a measured breath, tightening his grip around Seth ever so slightly. Even though neither of them have moved, Seth feels impossibly close.

“If I had found you like that, man,” Seth confesses, “I-I don’t know what I’d have done.”

Lyor hasn’t been able to stop staring at Seth, but now he has to look away, blinking into the gentle darkness of the plane, throat pinhole thin. He’s beginning to regret keeping Seth awake at all, because he is not remotely prepared for this. Before, back in the hotel, Lyor had been able to bat away Seth’s sincerity with a fumbling tangent, a few clumsy jokes. But sitting together like this, with Seth’s skin warm beneath his touch, Lyor can’t hide from the emotion he can feel radiating from his friend. Or from the ugly, frothing mess of his own.

He’d thought he’d said enough in the hotel. He’d admitted- mostly, technically, with a lot of bluster following straight after- that he’d been worried about Seth. And it was true, he had been worried- but no. As much as Lyor wants to ignore it, he can tell when he’s lying to himself. He’d been worried, yes, but there had been more to it than that.

Lyor’s throat unsticks, but he still doesn’t know what to say in response to Seth. The only thing he can think to do is blurt out the thought that has been on his mind since the second he’d seen the tsunami hit and realised that Seth was still down there, right in its path.

“I didn’t expect to find you alive.”

The words feel heavy on his tongue. Lyor swallows down the bitter taste they leave. “I told the President and Emily that there was still a good chance you were fine, but I didn’t believe anything I was saying. I thought I was going to find your body. Or that I’d never find you at all.”

That hadn’t been worry. When Lyor had been shoving his way through the panicked stampede of onlookers, desperately fishing for his phone to call Seth and fumbling so much he dropped it and cracked the screen, he hadn’t been worried. When he’d been picking his way through a wasteland of debris, hollering Seth’s name and unable to shake the vision of finding him cold and stiff and gone, he hadn’t been worried.

Lyor can feel Seth’s stare boring into him, and it pulls his gaze back like a magnet. Seth is smiling, eyes as soft and earnest as they had been back in the hotel. 

“You didn’t stop looking, though.”

Terrified. Lyor had been terrified.

“I wasn’t going to stop.”

Lyor isn’t even sure himself what that confession was meant to be, but there’s something like satisfaction nestled in Seth’s expression, so he figures he’s done something right. This is too much- emotional conversations make him itch, like there are fire ants crawling under his skin. Suddenly, he’s all too aware of the way he’s still holding onto Seth, the point of contact unbearably warm. But as much as he wants to retreat, he’s paranoid that if he stops anchoring Seth, the guy might have another nightmare when he falls asleep, and they’ll have to go through this whole mess of sharing feelings again. Lyor knows Seth is a tactile person, and while he won’t tolerate hugs, he thinks he can manage this.

Lyor studiously ignores the part of himself that seems to find the idea of unhooking his fingers from around Seth’s wrist a momentous effort. Some part of him that wants to keep Seth close, as if he’ll lose him again if he doesn’t. It’s the same part of him that has been shuddering along with the plane during turbulence, the irrational part of himself he hasn’t fully been able to stamp out- and there’s nothing that Lyor hates more than irrationality, especially in his own mind.

So- for Seth’s benefit, Lyor reminds himself sternly- he only loosens his grasp, a clear invitation for Seth to either stay or pull away if he wants. After a few seconds, Seth withdraws, but as he does, his fingers brush lingeringly over the back of Lyor’s hand, too slow to be anything but deliberate. He wants to resent Seth for the implication that he’s the one in need of comfort in this situation- it makes that irrational side of him all the more difficult to quiet down- but the feeling fizzles out as soon as it surfaces.

Lyor is a certified master of resentment. It’s one of his greatest talents. So the fact that he can’t conjure the slightest bit towards Seth- Seth, who has been one of the more significant bothers in his life for the past year- probably means something. But Lyor doesn’t want to examine that. He’s not in the mood for any more self reflection- he thinks he’s done enough of that tonight for the next decade, at least. So he pushes those feelings to the side, ignoring them in the same way that he’s ignoring the fact that his hand is still brushing Seth’s where they lie on the adjoining armrests, and that he has no intention of moving it.

Instead, he lets himself sag into his seat, resuming his count of the crawling minutes until they’re safely back in Washington. He closes his heavy eyelids, but as he listens with a keen ear to the sounds of Seth’s breathing slowly evening out into the rumble of slumber once again, Lyor knows he won’t be getting any sleep during that flight.

**Author's Note:**

> For such a smart guy, Lyor sure is a real dumbass, huh?


End file.
